The article below is reprinted from the Morning Star.
Johannesburg was brought to a grinding halt on July 27 with 10,000 local government workers marching to Mary Fitzgerald Square to reaffirm their union's demand for a 15% wage increase and a housing subsidy.
About 150,000 workers in the country have stopped work. Unions say most public services are disrupted. The strike continued the next day.
Marches are happening in all the big centres — Johannesburg, Tshwane, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Sol Plaatjie — as well as in many of the smaller municipalities ranging from Bredasdorp, Mossel Bay and Beaufort West. In other municipalities workers are picketing the municipal offices.
The strikes are the first big challenge for new President Jacob Zuma, who has called for patience from workers but is faced by a situation in which South Africa's organised working class is rapidly running out of it.
Unions reported massive support for the strike. Many services, such as refuse removal, traffic, water maintenance and revenue collection, were not operating.
In recent weeks there have been violent protests over the lack of housing, water and electricity in the poorest townships.
The police in charge of traffic policing in the country's big cities are also taking part in the strike.
The country has already faced a big strike by construction workers, threatening stadiums being built for next year's football World Cup.
That strike was ended in July after workers and employers agreed on a 12% pay rise.
Zuma took power in May after a campaign in which he pledged to ease poverty. He was supported by the main union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party.
COSATU and the SACP wanted a change in the previous administration's economic policies, which they said were too pro-business.
In Cape Town, 3000 workers marched to the provincial offices of employers' organisation Salga to assert the union's key demands of a living wage, filling of the 25% of vacant posts in the public sector and the improvement of housing benefit. In Durban, 5000 workers marched and picketed workplaces.
The actions around the country were generally peaceful, but there were reports of police action in Polokwane, where workers were shot at and arrested.